trust is broken

I couldn't write to you yesterday, because our internet was out in the morning.

Welcome to a developing country!!

So.  What we've now learned is we were overcharged for our wall.

By our house maid.  Who took a cut.

And she is the one who told the authorities to come extort cash from us about our wall, in which she took a cut of also.

This has disheartened me greatly.

Not to mention the fact that I have to rewash every dish she cleans, because they're not up to my cleanliness standards when they still have chunks of food dried on.

I've already had to talk to her about the bleach that ruined the only clothes I brought, all my favourites from Canada, and now I have to talk to her about the dishes.

I'm not paying someone to rinse them off and throw them in the rack.

I can do that, but I won't, because I'm a germaphobe.

Anyway, I now know that I need to be harder and tell her to clean things up to par.

I fucking hate this!  I'm not a 'boss' like that!

Unless, of course, you're on four legs and have an abundance of fur.

However, now I have to be with her.  I can't trust her, and I have to teach her.

Papi goes on to the DR1 Forum and chats with expats there.  They told him we have to train our house maids because they are not very good.

How can she not be?  She has been a maid forever!!!!!

I guess nobody wanted to tell her.

I also noticed that she does the bare minimum and then is 'done'.  She doesn't clean for the 5 hours we hire her for.  She sweeps, throws a mop around, rinses the dishes then does a load of laundry and leaves.

I had to wash the counters off because of the grease that had accumulated over the years that she never properly cleaned.

I'm so frustrated and I don't want to be a 'boss', but we're not paying her for fun people!!!  We're not so rich that we can give money away for free.  We could do without paying someone to be here, but she guilted us in to hiring her when we bought the house!!!

You see, the last people were guilted into hiring her and the people before them were, and so on and so on.

We also learned we have to get her to sign a document stating when she started working, because the other scam is that people will say they've worked for 7 years and sue for severance pay, even if they only worked for a month.

Now that we are learning about how people operate because of the colour of someone's skin, I understand how it becomes 'us' and 'them'.

It's NOT what I wanted.

I wanted to be part of the DR Family.

I wanted to have love from our new neighbours.

I wanted to immerse myself into their 'community'.

I wanted to be accepted for 'me', the loving, giving person.

I don't get to have that.

The Pool Man and his Dominican wife are teaching us all about how people operate their scams, and it has really saddened me.

The Dominican wife told us not to trust her.  That she is the one calling the authorities who extort money from us.

I wanted so bad to believe that she was trust worthy and have faith in her.  I was wrong.

We've been taken.

I didn't want to believe it, until I realized something about the temporary guard we have.

The first day we hired him, she told us he was $1,000 pesos.  The next night when we were going to pay him directly, she told us it's now only $700 pesos.

Why?  Because she took a $300 pesos cut the first night.

She wants us to hire her friends to do 'this' and 'that' all over the place here, even if they don't know how to do it.

No more.

I'm not hiring one more person from her, because I don't need to pay a finder's fee for every job that needs to be done, plus I need the job done by a professional.

Like the Dominican wife says, "They'll never tell you that they can't do a job."

Now, I have to be a 'boss', and I don't like it.

my confidence reigns in any business setting